tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post5927853579572166117..comments2024-03-28T14:04:54.557-07:00Comments on the prowling Bee: By such and such an offeringSusan Kornfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05384011972647144453noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-59328922082426610152023-04-26T11:16:05.318-07:002023-04-26T11:16:05.318-07:00This one is inspired, Larry and you’ve made sense ...This one is inspired, Larry and you’ve made sense of a very opaque poem. There is a school of thought which demands that a poem must stand alone in its art, that no biographical inferences are acceptable or warranted. But with Emily, I think that is half the fun!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4029797379711350813.post-84004916397532916022022-04-21T07:56:44.355-07:002022-04-21T07:56:44.355-07:00Although the Dickinson Museum’s list of books in t...Although the Dickinson Museum’s list of books in the Homestead and Evergreen Libraries doesn’t include Fox’s (or Foxe’s) Book of Martyrs, that list may be incomplete. However, given Edward Dickinson’s refusal to take communion until 1850, a history of Christian martyrs published in 1563 would probably have been way down on his reading list. We also don’t know whether ED was familiar with the book, but given its tediousness, it seems unlikely.<br /><br />If "By such and such an offering" was one of at least 250 that ED sent Susan D, hoping for comments or at least acknowledgements, it’s not hard to imagine ED’s feelings of abandonment in 1858. During Susan's first two years of marriage, she probably struggled with her own sexual proclivities and her relationship with Austin: it was five years before their first child was born. In addition, during the house-warming years in their elegant new home, Susan and Austin entertained lavishly, a time-consuming task. Eventually, their marriage settled into a consenting 'ménage à quatre', with ED and Austin’s mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, as third and fourth partners.<br /><br />It's hard to imagine a more ambiguous poem than 'By such and such an offering'. Is it a serious comment on life or a sarcastic complaint about a delinquent recipient of ED’s “offerings” of poetry? Given ED’s famously droll sense of humor, my money is on the latter. To unmask the recipient of this quatrain, switch the masculine addressee to feminine and the first two lines become “By such and such an offering / to Mrs. So and so”, which sounds sarcastic to me. The third and fourth lines of a sarcastic-complaint scenario might translate as “I hope my gifts of poetry weave webs that bind us in a life of love / If not, my poems become mere pastings in albums of my martyred life.”<br />Larry Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02810899482852120751noreply@blogger.com